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Monday, 16 August 2010

Smokophobia.

(That 60-sample thing is going to happen again next week so I have to get as much out of my system as possible).

An interesting conversation at the bus stop today. One of those that isn't enclosed, just one panel up and a roof. They are illegally designated 'no smoking' because they are not enclosed.

The harridans normally fake some kind of lung seizure if they pass me smoking in the open air. Now they are becoming more bold, encouraged by the State-sanctioned abuse of anyone the State disapproves of. They expect smokers to cower when confronted, to tug the forelock and apologise for being offensive. This particular harridan met me.

I was under the shelter, next to the illegal 'no smoking' sign. It's only a matter of moving a yard to get out from under the shelter so it's no effort to avoid that sign, and the constant rain has finally stopped here. As a non-smoker once said when I explained this - "so you can't be in the shelter blowing smoke out, but it's fine to be outside the shelter blowing smoke in?" That's about the size of it, yes. This time the harridan started even before I had finished rolling a cigarette.

In her best 'I am Righteous' voice, she pronounced: "This is non-smoking, you know."

"Good thing nobody's smoking then," I said and licked the paper.

"That's a cigarette."

"Your powers of observation are impressive indeed. Do you work for MI6?"

She folded her arms. "Don't you get cocky with me. You can't smoke that in here."

"Actually, I can, but I wasn't planning to. In fact I had planned to move downwind of you before lighting it but I think the upwind side of the shelter is closer." A yard, that's all I had to move. No longer under the harridan's personally-declared dictatorship zone, I lit up.

"That's disgusting." She waved her hands around and wrinkled her face which gave her the appearance of a bulldog having a fit. "I don't want your cancer."

Now this one, I have practiced for, long and hard. So I can now deliver it deadpan.

"I don't have cancer. Smokers don't get it. The smoke has to be metabolised in the smoker's lungs before it becomes cancerous. Only the smoke coming out is dangerous and I'm blowing that away." Well, the Righteous have conditioned people to instantly believe any old tosh so why not make up some of my own?

"You're blowing it at me!"

"No, the wind is doing that. I'm just blowing it away from me because it's really dangerous."

The look on her face made it very difficult to hold my composure. It was somewhere between realisation and terror. "You're giving me cancer!"

"No, you're getting it yourself. I'm just blowing it away from me." Now, keeping a straight face was really hard. She was, genuinely, trying to dodge smoke. Harmless smoke that would blow right past her if she just let it alone. Smoke that, if she had left me alone, wouldn't even be heading in her direction. I'd have gone downwind of her out of general decency if only she had not taken it upon herself to accost me.

"Don't you care?" I think the last word was 'care'. It was delivered at a frequency that's at the very limit of my hearing range.

"No." I took another puff.

Still doing her little dodge-the-smoke dance, she came out with 'How can you do this to me?"

"Because you want me to. Because you consider me subhuman and inferior. Because you think it's fine to attack me when I have never done anything to you. Well, now I'm doing something. I'm acting like this because it's what you expect. It's what you wanted. Now you have it."

Her bus came at that point and my, she was sprightly when it came to boarding it. I didn't get the chance to point out that all I was doing was messing with her mind, that second-hand smoke has never done more than inconvenience anyone, that she really wasn't going to get cancer from the few molecules she might have inhaled as the wind took it past her.

Thinking back, I'm not even sure I would have. I might instead have expanded upon the various lingering deaths she could expect from that one picogram of tobacco smoke that might have stuck in her hair. Antismokers have had it all their own way and I'm not playing that game any more.

They deserve the stress and the fear. They deserve to worry themselves into psychosomatic illness. They believe that we can kill them with a breath, so let's do it. Compromise? We tried that. They refused and now there can be no compromise. Talking to Government? We tried that too. They deleted us.

All we are, are human beings who happen to smoke. Some people don't like the smell and that is the total of their reasoning for treating us as filth. There is nothing else. So act like filth. They expect us to be selfish, so be selfish. They expect us to give them a long and agonising death, so let's do that.

It's what they want from us. Give them what they want. Give them terror, give them high blood pressure, give them heart attacks and yes, give them cancer. None of it caused by smoking, all of it caused by their own terror of smoking. Smokophobia can kill. It's better than Kung Fu. You don't even have to touch them.

Practice is essential. Nobody can deliver those lines cold and keep a straight face when you see them believing it.

Oh, I am sure antismokers will be along to call me evil and twisted but again, that's what you expect from a smoker, isn't it? I'm only acting the way you want me to act. I'm only doing what you want. I don't want to disappoint.

You made me, antismokers, and every day you reinforce the monster youcreated. Every day you make me more twisted, more evil, nastier and less caring. So my made-up nonsense could make some of you ill and might manage to kill a few. Watch me not care. I will treat you as you treat me. With utter and absolute contempt.

You, antismokers, are subhuman and must be denormalised. No, don't get hysterical, I am not proposing to force smoking on anyone. Nonsmokers who are not antismokers are not the enemy. The harridans and the Righteous are the enemy and the fewer of them I have to contend with, the happier I will be. If that means scaring them to death well, so be it. I have no other recourse. The government has declared me an unperson. They will not listen. The councils will not listen. Even the pubs, places I used to be able to go, decry their losses while pretending that the absence of smoking customers has had no effect.

There is no alternative avenue open to me. No more options. Direct retaliation is all that is left and no, I am not going to resort to violence. I'm too old for that. All I have are words and words can cut deeper than any knife if wielded correctly. I did not condition these people to believe in utter rubbish but they are conditioned now and I will make use of that.

Today's stitch in the monster's skin comes with the news that a 70-year old woman has been fined for littering for dropping ash. Not a cigarette. Ash. Sterile fragments that disappear on the wind and are lost in a moment among the natural dust of the world. I put mine in the compost along with cigarette ends. It's good fertiliser and it contains a natural insecticide. Everything in a cigarette is of plant origin. It's vegetarian and biodegradable.

I didn't start out as an enemy of antismokers. I didn't set out to start a war. I was happy with smoking and non-smoking segregation. I didn't demonise or denormalise anyone. I never considered anyone as subhuman and I never took it upon myself to decide anyone else's life choices for them.

23 comments:

I feel horribly deprived. Why do I never get to have these conversations with smokophobes? I have some nice lines ready for them but no matter how many bus stops I smoke in or near, the most I've ever elicited is a judgemental glance, and that could be due to my shambolic attire and ink-stained fingers. Is Aberdeen especially prone to producing these fools?

There was a time when I would have just snarled and been abusive but one day I thought 'No, I'm going to have some fun with this'. I have, in the past, convinced several townies that sheep-racing is a common sport in the countryside, and that cows will eat badgers if they can catch them. The 'Romans built straight roads because they hadn't invented steering' meme is still going strong. It'll be in the National Curriculum in a few years.

So, I thought, why not turn my talent for telling poker-faced tall stories into a weapon?

The key is to stay absolutely calm and relaxed, speak as if you are delivering a lecture filled with facts and ignore any contradictions you may inadvertently make. They won't notice unless you stumble, or add in an 'Ooops, I mean...'

No matter how agitated they get, stay absolutely calm. If they look like they might get violent, point out that all smokers are coated with third-hand smoke and if they get it on themselves, only concentrated bleach will get it off.

So even if they do hit you, you can take comfort in knowing they'll rush home and dip their hand in bleach.

There still aren't very many of these harridans but their numbers are increasing. Mostly I hear fake-coughs and grumbles, which I ignore. They have to start the conversation. That puts them in the psychological position of extracting information from me, rather than me telling them stuff. They're more likely to believe it if it's in response to them, rather than just delivered.

It's the same as the old witchdoctors. They didn't have magic powers but everyone believed they did, to the extent that the witchdoctor could often curse someone to death using words and props.

The props are tobacco now, and the words are 'passive smoking'. Many, many people believe absolutely in the power of these things.

I didn't make them believe in this witchdoctor nonsense, but I intend to make full use of it.

Funnily enough I had my first "anti-smoker in the real world" experience yesterday. Nowhere near as dramatic but noticeable as it was the first. Having just travelled on the train for 4 hours I had arrived at my destination and was stood in the train station's 100+ car park waiting for a taxi (as the entire train station is no smoking, natch). Some overweight woman, probably in her 50s, scarf flung over her shoulder (you know the type - probably a "manager" in some kind of public service) obviously got a whiff of smoke carried to her on the wind (she was probably about 40 or 50 feet away) and loudly "tut tutted" and looked disgusted. I was literally gagging for her to say something as I'd had a bad day and was going to give her the full shouted stream of expletives with "rip off your head and piss down your neck" in there somewhere, too, but she didn't.

Shame.

I hope the politicians get to see the sort of civic society they are actively creating.

Also, see Dick Puddlecote's recent blog. He's creating a list of anti-smoker psychosis. It should be an interesting (and unfortunately, lengthy) enterprise.

Thinking about it, I'm not sure if the car park is non-smoking. But sod em. I don't smoke on the platform, (as ridiculous as that ordinance is when it's open air)partially because I have heard the smoke Nazis get on the tannoys before now when someone has wandered 100 yards away from other commuters to have a smoke on the end of the platform). But I'll be damned if they say a massive open air car park is their property and thus non-smoking, too.

Thinking about it, it probably is.

But screw them. What are they gonna do? Throw me out of the station when I'm already out of the station? Get on the tannoys to berate someone who is 80 yards away from the platform?

Man, this legislation has to go soon. I know there has been violence because of it, but I can really see massive social division coming up. It's one thing being told not to smoke in a cinema or on a train (basically, the 1990s), it's another thing being told not to smoke in the open air. That is so absurd that even mild people who hate confrontation (like myself) finally think "That's it!" and actually look forward to someone doing something.

(I'd also read about the woman in Sandwell and was waiting for a Jobsworth to pounce as I discarded my cigarette. I am gagging for the day when one of these idiots comes for me just so I can ignore them and refuse to say who I am. And then, as they undoubtedly will, they try and physically halt my progress so I can do them for assault).

Have you noticed how the medical profession have been laying into homeopathy lately? I have no strong opinions on homeopathy one way or another, except to say that when something is attacked from all sides, you need to ask why.

However, the arguement used is that there is no active ingredient left in the remedy due the the high dilution. They then conveniently forget that arguement when it comes to cigarette smoke in the open air. It must be one or the other, it cannot be both.

Excellent stuff, Leg-iron. The fun to be had watching the righteous mentally torture themselves over a bit of smoke almost makes me regret giving up too. Still, if my emergency stash of giving up fags fags ever turn up from where I hid them I can at least have fun causing a few palpitations by taking the pack out and fiddling with unlit cigarettes. It's not like you necessarily need to light one to get a reaction from these fuckwits.

Reading your post Leg-Iron has given me a thought. Since our smoking activity is so dangerous, then shouldn’t we be writing to our MPs and suggesting that regular medical check-ups should be made compulsory to check for SHS lung damage?

A nice little waste of every ones time and public funds that would be – eh? I wonder how long it would be before people got pissed off.